Report comment

Martin, I would just mention that the point of the Napoleonic code (they always use a small 'c') was to unite France and the French. Prior to the code, which came into force in March 2004 France was in effect a series of smallish states, although please don't tell Eleanor of Aquitaine I said that. It was said that if you crossed France by horse you would change legal system more often than you changed your horse.

By the beginning of 19 century France was divided into more or less two different legal 'regions'; the north, that is more or less north of the Loire, was like ours a sort of common or customary, ad hoc system; south of the Loire it was more based on the Roman, codified system.

Boney got together four famous lawyers, two from the north and two from the south, and told them to write out one system using
the best of the former two. They were also instructed to write it in simple language comprehensible to anyone who could read, which it is, well it is if you can read French.

Another of his 'unifying' projects was to forbid the use of regional languages such a Bretton and this was beaten out of the children, much as Welsh was out of children in Wales.

I therefore have to ask myself why it was that they tried, and failed, to beat it into me?

England had had a sort of compulsory 'reserve heir' system and this was until fairly recently called 'gavelkind' ('kind' = child in German), but that was abolished by the LPA 1925. William The Conqueror had abolished it for the most part, but Kent was allowed to keep it because, apparently, they were good, for which read submissive, to him. The result is the very small patchwork of farms and smallholdings seen still in Kent today.